VoIP Telephone System – VoIP Vs PBX Phone Systems

VoIP vs. PBX Phone Systems

In years past, businesses required PBX phone systems in order to handle the telephonic needs of their businesses. However, these PBX systems were expensive, hard to manage, and many times not easy to update or upgrade when business needs dictated it was necessary. With the massive proliferation of the Internet, businesses now have another option for handling their vast telephony needs – Business VoIP Phone Systems .

What is VoIP?

VoIP is a technology acronym which stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.”

Protocols are basically the rules that govern how all things related to the Internet work and insure that people all over the world are using the same rules to help make the Internet work better.

Thus, VoIP describes the international rules of how the human voice can be transmitted over the Internet.

Traditional Phone Systems

Think for a moment about your traditional landline telephone in your home. Your home has a phone line which is connected to a local telephone pole, and that line is then connected to a group of other phone lines at the telephone company’s central office nearest to your home. From there, all of the phone companies have links to all of their other central offices where phone lines exist.

When you place a call from your home phone, the telephone company routes your call over the phone line system to the phone line of the person you are calling using these central office locations.

To do this, they use what is referred to as the Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN. This process uses dedicated phone lines and comes at a relatively high cost because of it.

PBX System

When you move into a business telephony environment, the business has physical phone lines which come into the building from the phone company, and then physical lines which connect each phone within the building to the main PBX phone system as well.

Traditionally, the business’ PBX or “Private Branch Exchange” system would route the calls that come into the building for the various phone extensions in the phone system.

While this system is effective, the larger the phone system the more complicated it’s administration. In addition, PBX is often cost prohibitive for medium or small business phone system purchase, leaving them without many feasible options to use.

VoIP Phone Systems

As we move into the first part of the twenty first century, many businesses of all sizes are now moving away from traditional PBX phone systems, and moving towards using VoIP technology.

VoIP offers businesses the ability to address their telephony needs with ease of administration, the ability to upgrade and update their systems, as well as the number one advantage of VoIP – reduced costs.

VoIP phone systems allow large, medium, and small business phone systems to operate over their existing data network. Where in the past each phone and each computer had to have their own line to connect them to the central network of the building, now only one line is necessary.

Just as your computer sends out digital data over the corporate Ethernet network, your VoIP phone can turn your voice into digital data and send it the same way, and over the same cable.

In addition, where wireless networks are available, the VoIP transmissions can happen over the wireless network as well. Cellular phones are a good example of this wireless technology.

VoIP vs. PBX

When you look at the way VoIP vs. PBX works, it is easy to see that VoIP is the way of the future and traditional PBX systems are effective but limited.

Just as how in the past, fax machines were the way to pass documents from one location to another, but now, we use e-mail; PBX systems used to be the way to route calls but now VoIP is taking over.

Contact CAT5 Technology at 1-866-816-4551 to give us the opportunity to help you decide which system is best for your business needs.